Leo Seltzer - Transcontinental Roller Derby

Transcontinental Roller Derby

Sometime in early 1935, Leo read an article in Literary Digest magazine that said ninety-three percent of Americans roller skated at one time or another during their lives. Discussing the article with some of the regulars at Ricketts, a restaurant in Chicago's Near North Side, Seltzer was challenged to come up with a sport utilizing roller skating participants.

Bicycle races and dance marathons were very popular at the time, and in previous decades there had been successful 24-hour and multi-day roller skating races, at least one of which was called a "roller derby" in the press.

Seltzer began jotting ideas onto the tablecloth, incorporating these popular entertainment forms with a roller skating theme. The name Roller Derby was trademarked on July 14, 1935 (No. 336652), and on August 13, 1935, twenty thousand spectators filled the Chicago Coliseum to see 'Colonel' Leo Seltzer's Transcontinental Roller Derby, a mythical marathon race from one end of the country to the other which incorporated both male and female participants on a banked track.

Seltzer's decision to use women was a double-edged sword for the sport, since it guaranteed a large female audience at a sporting event, but the presence of women athletes made the mainstream press view Roller Derby as a sideshow, not a legitimate sport. The premier race in Chicago was a tremendous success, but subsequent engagements throughout the country were not as successful, and Seltzer's entire enterprise almost ended with a tragic bus crash in 1937 when nineteen members of a touring group of Roller Derby skaters and support personnel were killed.

In December 1937, sportswriter Damon Runyon saw the game in Miami, became enthralled, suggested a more structured game with more contact between the skaters and a new version of Roller Derby was created. Seltzer's game and traveling troupe of skaters evolved and continued to have moderate growth, but it was not until November 29, 1948, when Roller Derby, broadcast on television from New York City's 69th Regiment Armory, captivated the nation. Roller Derby was finally the smash hit Leo Seltzer had always envisioned, although within a few short years, the sport was overexposed on TV, the brand new medium that had catapulted it to prominence.